Brigham H. Roberts: A Biographical Essay, by Sterling McMurrin
[Sterling McMurrin is E. E. Ericksen Distinguished Professor at
the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. He received B.A. and M.A.
degrees from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in philosophy
from the University of Southern California. Prior to joining the
faculty of the University of Utah in 1948, he taught philosophy
at the University of Southern California. His publications include
A History of Philosophy (co-author), Contemporary Philosophy
(co-editor), The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion,
The Philosophical Foundations of Mormon Theology, and Religion,
Reason and Truth. He has authored numerous scholarly articles
on philosophy, religion, and education.]. Pp. xiii -xxxi.

In one of the earliest scholarly studies of Mormonism, the Mormon
philosopher E. E. Ericksen, influenced by the pragmatic principle
that "institutions are made and ideals are formed in the
process of adjustment," treated the development of Mormon
society, religion, and morals in terms of three successive eras.1
The first, to the death of Joseph Smith and the beginning of the
westward movement, was a period defined especially by the conflict
of the Mormons with their neighbors.2 The second, the era of the
migration and colonization, was marked by the Mormons' struggle
against nature and their troubles with the federal government.
The third, following the decline of the Mormon cooperative movement,
Ericksen regarded as a time of internal institutional and social
conflict and intellectual adjustment. It was in a sense a "scholastic"
period, a time for defending the actions of the past, justifying
the moral ideals, clarifying the religious doctrines, and constructing
a rational philosophy in the light of modern scientific thought
and democratic practice.

When allowance is made for the distortion in the description of
the historical process that inevitably results from adherence
to formulae of this type, Ericksen's thesis is a valuable index
to an understanding of Mormon thought and behavior. Today a fourth
period might be added, extending from the close of World War II
to the present, which has been and is being marked by the worldwide
extension of Mormonism, a promised dissolution of its extreme
parochialism, and the apparent beginnings of a genuine universalism.
But it is Ericksen's third era-the predominance of internal intellectual
conflict and a "scholastic" interest and effort-that
is of concern here, for the intellectual efforts of that era were
dominated by Brigham H. Roberts.3 Indeed, the era itself effectively
came to at least a temporary end with Roberts's death in 1933.

From their beginning as a religious community, the Mormons have
had a characteristically pragmatic American temperament, and the
history of their institutions and practices exhibits clearly their
responses to the political, economic, and natural forces that
have affected them. From the financial crisis of 1837 that disrupted
their first congregation in Ohio to the economic and social impact
of the large-scale federal military installations established
in Mormon country during and since World War II, the Mormons as
a group have exhibited the social effects of external pressures
and internal tensions.

But somewhat less obvious, thou evident to any careful observer,
are the forces that have contributed to the molding of the Mormon
mind, the beliefs and doctrine of the Mormons and the character
of their intellectual life generally. Those influences range across
a broad spectrum, from the hopes and expectations of Bible-believing
Protestant dissidents, who looked daily for a restoration of the
primitive gospel, and the enthusiasm of millenarian revivalists
to the reverberations of the American enlightenment that joined
with the natural optimism of the frontier to strengthen, if not
actually induce, the Mormons' life-affirming theology and irrepressible
faith in the future. Other factors included the communitarian
ideal and experimental attitude of nineteenth-century America,
a revisionist Baptist theology that contributed to Mormon doctrine,
and the symbolism and ritual of Freemasonry that are found even
today in the temple cultus.

The mainstream of the religion, of course, was the watered-down
Puritanism that informed the character of the foundation elements
in American culture. Although Mormonism revolted against the traditional
Christian absolutism, and even more strenuously against the Calvinist
doctrines of original sin, divine election, predestination, and
salvation by grace only, it was well within the Puritan moral
tradition that was grounded in the belief that the proper vocation
of man is to create the Kingdom of God. Despite their bout with
polygamy, their love of the theater, music, and dance, and their
eudaemonistic moral philosophy, the Mormons have been from their
beginning essentially Puritan in their morals, committed to the
virtues that were built by the English colonists into the basic
moral structure of American life.

To recognize the multiple influences on the religious, moral,
and intellectual character of Mormonism, or, indeed, to see the
Mormon religion as a syncretic product of the cultural amalgam
of nineteenth-century America, is not to disparage the creative
endowments of the Mormon leaders. Joseph Smith, the charismatic
founder of the movement, was remarkably independent in his thinking
and possessed uncommon imaginative and intuitive powers. He broke
with many facets of the established theological traditions and
at least partially freed his followers from intellectual bondage
to the past. His successor, Brigham Young, justly celebrated for
his administrative talents, which saved the Mormon movement from
dissolution and transformed an eschatological sect into a successful
church, colonizing much of the American west in the process, had
a far greater impact on the intellectual life of Mormonism than
is commonly realized. It was especially under the leadership of
Young that the basically Puritan characterof Mormonism was shaped
and the distinctive doctrines made articulate.

Despite the practicality of the Mormon people, whose energies
have been devoted primarily to utilitarian pursuits in cultivating
the life of their religious community, from the beginning strong
intellectual currents have animated and at times strengthened
their culture. Mormonism has suffered and continues to experience
incursions of anti-intellectualism, but the achievement of knowledge
has always been a prominent Mormon ideal; and at least for the
past century most Mormons have had a healthy respect for the virtues
of reason. For the most part, they are firm in their insistence
that religion should be reasonable and conscientious in their
conviction that an honest pursuit of knowledge and a genuine respect
for reasonableness not only will not discredit or refute the tents
of the fatih, but also will clearly establish their truth and
justify the claims of the Church. It was here in the domain of
knowledge and reason that Roberts was the preeminent leader of
the Mormons, committed to the vindication of Mormonism for the
defense and edification of the Saints and a warning to the world.

The defense of the faith was an exacting task because the Mormon
beliefs were always set forth with the dogmatic assurance of divine
authorization. Not only the doctrinal views of the people but
also their moral and spiritual ideals and often their social practices
were grounded in a sincere belief in the revelation of the word
and will of God as their source and sanction. Although believing
Mormons, for the most part, have held that their religion requires
no defense, in practice they have commonly made serious efforts
to construct effective arguments in response to the critics of
their religion and, incidentally, to strengthen the foundations
of their faith. In a unique way the Mormons even today have tied
their faith to their historical roots. They insist that the truth
of their religion, the authority of their priesthood, and the
divine foundations of their Church depend entirely on the factual
truth of certain of their historical claims. The truth of two
of those claims is held to be absolutely crucial. If Joseph Smith's
vision of the Father and the Son was not in fact an objective,
veridical experience, and if the Book of Mormon was not brought
forth, as Joseph Smith insisted, by the hand of God, in very fact
an account of God's involvement with ancient Americans descended
from the people of ancient Judah, then the Church and its priesthood
and Mormonism as a religion are abject frauds. This is the position
in which the Church has, by its own official pronouncements, voluntarily
placed itself. It has tied its faith to its own history and to
the authenticity of its distinctive scripture, the Book of Mormon.
It is a position that Roberts held and reaffirmed on many occasions.

There is something private, subjective, and inevitably elusive
about theophanies. They cannot be repeated and cannot become public
experience and knowledge and are therefore in a sense unarguable.
But a book is something else-it is a public object. It can be
printed and reprinted, translated and sold, placed on a shelf
and read, read by whoever cares to invest the time and energy.
Here in the Book of Mormon, a truly remarkable production for
which strange claims were made, was something that demanded a
reasonable and believable explanation. Did it or did it not have
the origin claimed for it-gold plates, an angel, a miraculous
translation, and all else?

As Mormonism's most competent historian and leading theologian,
as well as the most aggressive exponent and capable disputant
in its leadership, Roberts quite naturally, and certainly very
effectively, filled the role of chief defender of the faith. This,
of course, entailed the defense of the Book of Mormon, the claims
of its origin, the historical reliability of its narrative, its
sometimes strange theology, and the necessity of its coming forth
in the "last dispensation." To this task he devoted
much of his energy in his earlier years, producing numerous articles
and eventually two substantial and, for the Mormons, landmark
volumes in its support.4 He attacked its attackers and responded
in detail to its critics, defended its literary style, argued
endlessly on the basis of both external and internal evidence
for its authenticity as a collection of historical documents,
meticulously examined and defended the claims of those who were
associated with its production, and justified its existence as
a new witness for God with vigor and subtlety.

Of course, Roberts was not the first to undertake a serious defense
of the Book of Mormon. He had the advantage of the arguments of
the early Mormon apostle-philosopher Orson Pratt and others. But
whatever the lasting value of Roberts's work, it was the most
effective defense of the Book of Mormon that had been produced,
and certainly nothing more impressive has since been forthcoming,
even though numerous writers have tried and today efforts are
being made to prove its authenticity through such means as computerized
word studies, to say nothing of extensive investments in archaeological
research. Both by his Church histories and his studies of the
Book of Mormon, Roberts, more effectively than any other person,
made it possible for the generality of Mormons, at least those
who were inclined seriously to raise questions and demand answers,
to rest assured that their religious beliefs and distinctive scripture
were firmly and securely grounded in historical fact. Certainly
the acceptance of this new scripture, added as it was to the Old
and New Testaments and the modern revelations, gave Mormonism
both a firm confidence and a measure of increased strength.

In the closing passages of his New Witnesses for God, Roberts
acknowledged that not all the difficulties and objections to the
Book of Mormon had been removed. But, he wrote, "a little
more time, a little more research, a little more certain knowledge,
which such research will bring forth, will undoubtedly result
in the ascertainment of facts that will supply the data necessary
for a complete and satisfactory solution of all the difficulties
which objectors now emphasize, and on which they claim a verdict
against the Book of Mormon."5 It is of considerable interest,
therefore, that he returned to the analysis of the book some years
later, in the 1920s, again examining its origin, its substance,
its authorship, its literary style, and its historical authenticity.
In two heretofore unpublished manuscripts, "Book of Mormon
Difficulties: A Study" and "A Book of Mormon Study,"
he treated the book critically and forthrightly rather than defensively.

Roberts's earlier study closed with the sentence: "Until
this [the refutation of the positive evidences set forth for the
authenticity of the Book of Mormon] is done, I shall hold that
the mass of evidence which it has been the effort of the writer
through these pages to set somewhat in order, is sufficient, both
in quality and quantity, to fill the mind who pays attention to
it with a rational faith in the Book of Mormon-the American volume
of scripture."6 But in "A Book of Mormon Study,"
he found that much of the substance of the Book of Mormon was
quite common in the thought and literature of Joseph Smith's time
and place, that a literary analysis does not support the authenticity
of the book, and that Smith had the talent and creative imagination
to have been its author. Whereas in his earlier work he occasionally
found passages in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews that
were useful in his arguments for the Book of Mormon's authenticity,
he now found View of the Hebrews to be a serious threat
to that authenticity, and in "A Book of Mormon Study"
he devoted extensive space to his treatment of that threat.7

Roberts's "A Book of Mormon Study" must speak for itself.
But those interested in the author's conclusions set forth in
the manuscript should not neglect the statements affirming his
belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon that appear in
the letters that are a part of the record of the controversy that
resulted from a reading of the manuscript by Church officials.
The contrast of his manuscript, composed as an attempt to come
to grips with a basic problem that he apparently believed would
yield to scholarly analysis, with his affirmation, in the heat
of controversy, of his faith that the objective foundation of
Mormonism is not to be doubted raises the interesting question
of what Roberts did in fact believe about the Book of Mormon in
his latest years. That he continued to profess his faith in the
authenticity of the book seems to be without question, despite
the strong arguments and statements in his study that would appear
to explicitly express a conviction that it is not authentic.

Roberts's biographer, Truman G. Madsen, has argued in a paper
published in 1979 that in "A Book of Mormon Study" Roberts
was simply playing the role of the "devil's advocate."8
"The report," according to Madsen, "was not intended
to be balanced. A kind of lawyer's brief of one side of a case
written to stimulate discussion in preparation of the defence
of a work already accepted as true, the manuscript was anything
but a careful presentation of Roberts's thoughts about the Book
of Mormon or of his own convictions."9

Madsen held that Roberts was employing an essentially pedagogical
technique to bring attention to problems that should be faced
by the Church and by students of the Book of Mormon. In this he
had the support of Roberts's letters, written in the context of
controvers over his manuscript, but he did not adduce evidence
for his interpretation from the manuscript itself.10 Although
he quoted Roberts's statement of faith in his March 15, 1923,
letter to the present of the Church, Madsen did not provide his
reades with any of the many crucial statements in Roberts's study
that appear to a typical reader to throw serious doubt on the
authenticity of the Book of Mormon, or at the least on Roberts's
belief in its authenticity.11 The Roberts study was not available
to the general reader who might be interested in it, and, except
for listing the issues with which the study was concerned, Madsen
made none of its contents known in his paper. Roberts's argument
and conclusions were not mentioned.

In his authorized biography published in 1980, Madsen devoted
comparatively little attention to Roberts's views on the Book
of Mormon, referring only to publications that had appeared prior
to 1910.12 Although Roberts's unpublished manuscript, "The
Truth, the Way, the Life," a summary of his religious and
theological views, received an entire chapter, "A Book of
Mormon Study" was not mentioned, nor was there any indication
of the important and interesting controversy that it had generated.13

Perhaps the importance of "A Book of Mormon Study" lies
not so much in the question of the authenticity of the Book of
Mormon as in the interest which many have in the personality and
thought of Roberts himself, for he was intellectually the most
eminent and influential of all the official leaders of the Church.
And while Roberts apparently did not prepare the materials in
this volume for publication, it is because he is such a key figure
in the intellectual history of the Church that the record would
not be complete without them.

Roberts lived during a crucial period for Mormonism. The original
prophetic impulse was waning, the major feats of pioneering were
accomplished, and the struggles with the federal government and
their aftermath were taking a severe toll of human energy and
threatening the economic and insitutional life of the Church.
More than anything else, the Mormon Church needed the defenses
that would justify its existence, establish its moral and intellectual
respectability, and guarantee its own integrity. But there were
additional problems that engrossed Roberts-the coming of statehood
for Utah, the creation of a political life for the Mormon people,
and the secular threat to religion that was carried largely by
the new humanism, which enjoyed considerable support from the
sciences. It was especially the debate on evolution that captured
the attention of the Mormons after the turn of the century. Roberts
seemed born to the task of meeting these challenges, and he engaged
them with quite remarkable energy, dedication, and self-assurance.

The fundamentals of Mormon thought were quite firmly established
in the Church's first generation, but there was considerable confusion
in the doctrines, which grew somewhat erratically from the pronouncements
of the prophet, the impact of thoughtful converts, and the general
experience of the people. It was a later generation, the generation
of Ericksen's scholastic period, which pulled the philosophical
and theological strands together and brought some order out of
the earlier chaos. It was the intellectual leaders of htis period,
among whom Roberts was preeminent in both ability and influence,
who not only shaped the outlines of a systematic theology, but
also developed the perspectives that placed the Church as an institution
within the framework of history and provided the Mormon people
with the instruments for rationalizing and defending their beliefs
and practices. Though perhaps less radical and less creative than
the first, this generation was more reflective, more reasonable,
and intellectually more responsible. The Church had already become
defensive where before it had exhibited a quite admirable indepdence
in both thought and action, and argument and scholastic justification
had displaced the facile prophetic pronouncements of the first
years. Something very important to Mormonism had been lost with
the death of Jospeh Smith and the passing of those who had known
him and were close to him and had been creators with him of the
new faith and its rudimentary institutions. But just as inevitably,
something was gained by their successors in the necessity for
defining, explaining, and justifying the doctrine and exploring
and exploitning its numerous entailments for both thought and
action. Above all, a new intellectual vitality was gained by the
"defense of the faith and the saints."

In his private as well as public life, Roberts was a controversial
figure. His autobiography, still unpublished fifty years after
his death, though obviously unfinished, is a fascinating, moving
story of a lonely child in England, left to shift for himself
by irresponsible guardians after his Mormon-convert mother had
migrated to Utah; his walking barefoot from the Platte River to
Salt Lake City; a rough-and-tumble youth; his admirable struggle
for an education; his fight with his Church to get into politics;
his role in the struggle for Utah's statehood; his dramatic losing
battle with the U.S. Congress, which refused him his seat in the
House because of his polygamy. The full story of his life will
tell of his double struggle against the inroads of secularism
in the Church and the anti-scientific bias of some of his ecclesiastical
colleagues; of his battle as historian to publish an uncensored
history of the Church; of his fight over doctrine and evolution;
of his missionary controversies with the Christian sects; of his
fight to get into action in World War I, when he was commissioned
a chaplain above the age limit because of his demonstrated physical
strength and abilities; of his endless battle with the critics
of Mormonism; of his struggle to maintain the prestige and influence
of his quorum in the central administration of the Church, the
First Council of the Seventy, which since his death has been downgraded
in the top councils of the Church; of his determination to make
Mormonism intellectually respectable and acceptable; and of his
internal struggles with his own faith, the struggles of a man
who wanted to believe and yet be honest with himself and others.

Roberts belonged to the era of great Mormon oratory, and for almost
half a century he was the Church's great orator, in the days when
the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City sounded and resounded with the
voices of impassioned advocates and defenders, the days before
the microphone and camera robbed the Mormon conferences of much
of their character and vitality and inspiration, the days when
the Mormon Church both valued and invited argument and debate.
There was then a kind of intellectual openness about the Church
which encouraged thought and discussion; its faith and confidence
were firm and aggressive, and it was ready to take on all comers.
Its leadership could justifiably boast a roster of impressive
talent, but Roberts was at once its chief intellectual exhibit
and its most competent advocate.

The high value that the Mormons in the first decades of this century
placed on intellectual strength and achievement in matters pertaining
to religion yielded a good return, for the thought and writings
which issued from their ecclesiastical leaders, among whom were
several persons of historical, scientific, and poetic ability,
were a permanent impress upon the character of the religion and
the Church. Of these Roberts was the recognized leader. Often
in rebellion and conflict, he nevertheless commanded both the
confidence and admiration of his colleagues and of the rank and
file of the Church. His native intellectual powers, his wide and
intelligent reading, his forensic skills, the forcefulness of
his pen, his enthusiastic and even impetuous speech, and the sheer
impact of his uncommon personality and physical bearing made him
the intellectual leader of the Mormon people in an era when they
both encouraged and prized serious inquiry in religious matters.

Since Roberts's death half a century ago, the Church has suffered
a steady decline in matters pertaining to religious thought, a
decline accompanied by a growth of irrationalism and anti-intellectualism
from which there is no clear indication of recovery in the foreseeable
future. Some important sociological studies of Mormonism have
been made, and an entire generation of competent historians have
produced careful and reliable studies of the Church's history.
But comparatively little has been done in leadership circles in
matters pertaining to morals, religion, and philosophy, except,
of course, to enjoin Church members to accept the established
doctrine and live lives of virtue. Notwithstanding a brief respite
in the 1960s and 1970s, the Church has discouraged its best historians,
and it has consistently resisted serious and competent thought
in religion and philosophy. Perhaps a resurgence of interest in
Roberts's work will point toward a more productive future.

In general, Roberts's prose style is rhetorical and dramatic.
He was at all times the orator. He was lacking in certain capabilities
possessed by some others among his colleagues in Church officialdom,
whose writings also left important impressions on the Mormon mind.
He did not have the precise diction, for instance, of his contemporary
James E. Talmage, and there is little indication that he possessed
the poetic talents of Orson F. Whitney. But both his oral and
written words drew strength from his directness and enthusaism.
He wrote as he spoke, and his written pages often read not as
finely composed and polished sentences, but as though they were
edited reports of extemporaneous statements-direct, often repetitive,
somewhat personal, as though writer and reader were in conversation,
sometimes careless in construction, but always to the point and
effective.

Like his public address, Roberts's writing was argumentative and
polemical. He enjoyed nothing more than argument; indeed, he was
at his best in a good fight. If there were no debate in sight,
he would produce a battle by monologue. In the heat of controversy
he always rose to the occasion, and it is not surprising that
his most commendable theological piece, The Mormon Doctrine
of Deity, certainly the most competent theological statement
to come from a Mormon leader, was in its most important part a
published debate, an argument with a Roman Catholic scholar set
within the larger dispute on Mormon doctrine that aroused widespread
public interest near the turn of the century.

Roberts's strength as a historian resided especially in his intense
historical consciousness, his quite spacious perspectives on history,
his capacity for historical research and talent for narrative,
his sense of personal involvement with his subject, his passion
for it, and his sincere desire to be honest and open with his
readers. His histories are not without bias and prejudice. They
are clearly pro-Mormon and written with a vengeance. They are
intended to justify the Mormon Church and bring credit upon it,
but they are written with admirable honesty and sincerity, having
the mark of a desire for objectivity even when it is not achieved.
Often in his writings the Church comes out second best where a
man of lesser character under similar circumstances would have
found it easy to bring it out on top. In the preface of volume
1 of A Comprehensive History, Roberts wrote:

It is always a difficult task to hold the scales of justice at
even balance when weighing the deeds of men. It becomes doubly
more so when dealing with men engaged in a movement that one believes
had its origin with God, and that its leaders on occasion act
under the inspiration of God. Under such conditions to so state
events as to be historically exact, and yet, on the other hand,
so treat the course of events as not to destroy faith in these
men, nor in their work, becomes a task of supreme delicacy; and
one that tries th esoul and the skill of the historian. The only
way such a task can be accomplished, in the judgment of the writer,
is to frankly state events as they occurred, in full consideration
of all related circumstances, allowing the line of condemnation
or of justification to fall where it may; being confident that
in the sum of things justice will follow truth; and God will be
glorified in his work, no matter what may befall individuals,
or groups of individuals.

In A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (1930), Roberts composed for the historically
minded and history-based Mormons a strong and carefully researched
historical statement, laid out many of the fundamental issues
and basic problems, and did so with courage and honesty. He had
a large capacity for work, a fine sensitivity for the controversial,
and a talent for research, comprehension, and synthesis. And while
he wrote as he argued and debated, he achieved a measure of understanding
admirable in a man who was personally living through the impassioned
events that he described and who wrote as both a high official
of the Church and as the author of its official history.

Though every historian, if he is to avoid confusion and frustration,
must adopt a position from which he selects his materials, it
is unfortunate that Roberts was so strongly inclined toward what
may be called the "political" theme in his history.
Perhaps he would have been untrue to his own political nature
if he had done otherwise. But it is still disappointing to find
so much of political and insitutional conflict and controversy
and so little of cultural history in his work. Yet he was himself
a man of action, and quite certainly he told the narrative where
the action was.

Moreover, Roberts did not fully and properly examine and exploit
the origins of Mormonism; and partly because of htis, the generality
of Mormon people today, who depend so heavily unpon him for their
historical interpretations, do not understand and appreciate the
multiple forces that went into the making of their religion and
the historical movement of their Church. The picture is altogether
too simple and is too much affected by the strong desire to vindicate
and justify the Church. In his Outlines of Ecclesiastical History,
an early text first published in 1893, he mentioned very briefly
such matters as the Jewish and Hellenistic backgrounds of Christianity.
But here he was interested in making a case for the apostasy of
the early Christian church, and for this he was able to draw on
numerous able historians for his material. In his official Mormon
Church histories-the seven edited volumes of the History of
the Church, Period I, and his six-volume Comprehensive
History-aside from brief references to the revivalism current
in western New York in the 1820s and an account of Joseph Smith's
ancestry and family religious interests, he totally ignored the
American intellectual and religious milieu from which Mormonism
issued. "A Book of Mormon Study" partially atones for
this serious defect, one that has had an effect on the thought
of the Mormon people, who, for the most part, know little or nothing
of the cultural and intellectual background of Mormonism.

Roberts's treatments of Christian history were polemical and propagandistic.
He treated altogether too casually the large cultural forces that
produced Christianity and its institutions; and while his factual
materials are in the main reliable, conforming at least to the
opinions of some of the best histories of his time, much that
he wrote on this subject is difficult to defend. He failed to
grasp fully the character of early Hellenistic Christianity, to
see its very beginnings in Paul as a departure from the Palestinian
religion, and failed therefore, as did most Christian historians,
to judge fairly the subsequent course of Christian thought and
institutions. Nevertheless, he wrote intelligently, and though
he depended excessively on secondary sources, the church historians,
he set forth the main historical foundations upon which the Mormons
have rested their case, the apostasy of the Christian church as
the necessity for a restoration and the necessity of revelation
as the basis of that restoration.

Roberts's perspectives on history and his competence to treat
some of the large problems in Christian history were due in part
to his wide-ranging and intelligent reading. There was much that
he neglected in intellectual history, through no fault of his
own, for his formal education was at best very elementary. He
seems to have known too little of Greek and Roman philosophy and
their bearing upon Christianity, or of medieval philosophy and
theology. But he profited much from such writers as Andrew White,
John Kitto, John W. Draper, and Edward Gibbon. His works are well
furnished with telling references to such greats as Johann Mosheim,
Alfred Edersheim, Henry H. Milman, and Eusebius. Roberts read
extensively in all of these, and in Ernest Renan, Sir william
Blackstone, Thomas Macaulay, and an assortment of major philosophers,
ancient and modern, when still a youth employed as a blacksmith-no
mean accomplishment for one who first learned the alphabet at
the age of eleven. He was acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
John Fiske, and William James, even though he neglected some of
the major thinkers of his own generation in favour of second-
and third-raters.

Roberts's work indicates a rather broad acquaintance with both
the Old and New Testaments and with Bible commentaries. Indeed,
he was too dependent on such works as Bible commentaries and Bible
dictionaries. In treating the history of religion, he was given
to extensive quotations from secondary sources that were edifying
to his readers but exhibited deficiencies in his own knowledge.
However, he gave some attention to biblical scholarship and recognized
the claims of "higher" or historical-literary criticsm.
In an address, "Higher Criticism and the Book of Mormon,"
published in The Improvement Era for June and July 1911,
he said, "The Book of Mormon must submit to every test, literary
criticism with the rest. Indeed, it must submit to every analysis
and examination. It must submit to historical tests, to the tests
of archaeological research and also to the higher criticism."
The thesis of this address, however, was that the Book of Mormon
itself exhibited the errors of the higher criticism in certain
of its well-established condlusions relative to the Bible, for
example, the multiple authorship of Isaiah, which is contradicted
by the Book of Mormon. Here and elsewhere, Roberts insisted, it
is evident that the Book of Mormon in a very real way will save
the truths of the gospel. Referring to passages describing Christ's
appearance in the Western Hemisphere, he concluded, "And
that testimony of the gospel, its historicity and reality, contained
in the Book of Mormon, shall stand against the results of higher
criticism" (p. 786). A few years later, in "A Book of
Mormon Study," Roberts employed the principles of the higher
criticism in his own analysis and critique of the Book of Mormon.

Nevertheless, partly because of the failure by Roberts to appreciate
fully the findings of biblical scholarship, the Mormons even today
are in general the victims of traditional patterns of biblical
thought that often tie them to an outworn and intellectually frustrating
scriptural literalism. Despite Roberts's rather high level of
historical and theological sophistication, he failed to distinguish
effectively history from myth and legend in the biblical writings,
accepting literally such accounts as the Garden of eden and flood
stories of Genesis. There is no indication in his writings that
the New Testament scholarship of his time, such as the analysis
of the relationships that obtain among the synoptics or the impact
of the early church on the character and substance of the Gospels,
seriously affected his thought or scholarship.

It was in his studies of Mormon history that Roberts exhibited
his research talents. Elsewhere he was very dependent on secondary
sources, sometimes quoting so extensively from other writers that
it is difficult to determine the limits of his own ideas. But
this defect in scholarship was in some respects a boon to the
typical Mormon who read Roberts's writings, for here he was introduced
to historians and occasionally philosophers, theologians, and
sometimes scientists whose work otherwise owuld have remained
unkonwn to him. It was one of Roberts's great contributions to
his people that he was determined to raise the level of their
historical knowledge and religious thought, and he was remarkably
effective in this effort. Many Mormon libraries today still include
the works of Josephus, Eusebius, dRaper, or White because of his
lesson materials that called for the study of these writers. His
special responsibility as an official of the Church was to provide
leadership in missionary activities, and he firmly believed tha
tmissionaries should be adequately armed with knowledge for their
task.14 He was not always supported in this conviction by his
colleagues, who often preferred dependence on faith with a minimal
concern for relevant learning.

As a historian, Roberts was not free from the dictates of theology,
a serious weakness in any historian, but his work as theologian
was strengthened by his sense o fhistory as well as by his historical
knowledge. It was in part his historical consciousness that made
him preeminient among the "official" Mormon theologians.
He had remarkably reliable instincts for distinguishing the crucial
elements, both theological and philosophical, in the intellectual
foundations of Mormonism and was well endowed to treat those problems
within a historical framework of large perspectives and vision.
He was committed to the intellectual exploitation of the ideas
which he found or thought he found in the pronouncements of the
Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, and had a healthy respect for the
religious thought that issued from others of the earlier generation
of Mormon leaders, especially Brigham Young and Orson Pratt. He
was not a creator of doctrine like Smith and Young, or even like
the early Church leader Sidney Ridgon [sic], Mormonism's
chief tie with the Baptist tradition. And he was somewhat less
original in his more technical thought than Pratt. Though he shared
Pratt's disposition for speculative metaphysics, he lacked his
logical and analytical talent. There is no analytical piece among
Roberts's writings, for instance, comparable to Pratt's "The
Absurdities of Immaterialism," the most impressive philosophical
statement in the early Mormon literature. Roberts's philosophical
writings had a flamboyance and looseness about them that exhibit
his lack of expertise when compared to the thought of his contemporary,
W. H. Chamberlin. But Chamberlin was not a Church official, and
he died at a comparatively early age. His work would have brought
both credit and strength to Mormonism had he lived long enough
to publish the results of his religious and philosophical thought.
Chamberlin had studied with Josiah Royce at Harvard and Geroge
Holmes Howison at Berkeley and had gained a good foundation in
formal biblical studies at Chicago. Though he was in a position
to bring to Mormonism the fruits of his labors, supporting its
basic philosophy with the arguments of personal idealism, even
in some Mormon academic circles he suffered considerable neglect,
if not derision.

Like Mormon writers generally, in both his theological and philosophical
writings, Roberts seriously neglected discussion of fundamental
moral philosophy. This omission of an interest that should be
basic to religion has had an effect to this day on Mormon literature.
Roberts's younger contemporary and admirer Ephraim E. Ericksen,
professor of philosopher at the University of Utah, undertook
to compensate for this lacuna in Mormon thought, but, like Chamberlin,
despite his influence in academic circles, Ericksen did not enjoy
the official status that was necessary to produce a large and
lasting impact on Mormon thought.

Roberts's most influential colleague among official Mormon writers
was the scientist-apostle James E. Talmage. Roberts's talents
in treating doctrinal issues were perhaps less refined than those
of Talmage, as were his literary abilities, but he was less legalistic
and, on the whole, less literalistic than Talmage and had a more
expansive intellect, a more creative style, and a far greater
sensitivity to historical and philosophical issues. Although he
lacked the equivalent of Talmage's scientific education and knowledge,
Roberts was more competent than either Pratt or Talmage in his
grasp of the large implications of Mormon doctrine and was in
a better position to achieve perspective on the place of Mormonism
as a religious movement or social structure.

Roberts was not a theologian of the first order, as he was not
a major historian. He was simply the best theologian and historian
that Mormonism had in its first century. His main strength as
a theologian for Mormonism was not in his capacity for theological
dialectic or refinement or in any genuine originality for this
discipline. It was, rather, in his instinct for the philosophical
relevance of the Mormon theological ideas-this and his sense of
history. His combination of temperament, talent, and interest
brought breadth and depth to his thought, giving his work a profoundness
that was uncommon among Mormon writers.

More than any other Mormon thinker of his time, Roberts sensed
the radical heresy in Mormon theology, its complete departure
from the traditional Christian doctrines of God and man, its denial
of the divine absoluteness, and its rejection of the negativism
of the orthodox dogma of the human predicament. In those matters
he had a fine sense of what was entailed by the basic ideas already
laid down by his predecessors, and he did more than any other
person to set forth the full character of the Mormonism that followed
inevitably from the theological ideas of Joseph Smith, from the
doctrine, for instance, of the uncreated intelligence or ego and
the denial of the orthodox dogma on the creation of the world.
He reveled in the pluralistic metaphysics inherent in Mormon doctrine
and saw its implications for the freedom of the will and its possible
strengths in treating the problem of moral and natural evil. In
this he felt some kinship with William James, but he often failed
to follow through on the path that his best instincts had charted
for him, in part, perhaps, because he lacked the technical equipment
for doing full justice to his own ideas.

Roberts was not embarrassed by the unorthodox implications of
the finitistic conception of God indicated in the teachings of
Joseph Smith. He delighted in them, for they made room for a positive
doctrine of man, genuine freedom, and an unfinished universe.
He kept the discussion of the nature of God on a more defensible
level than did most of the Mormon writers in theology, who commonly
either failed to recognize the radical nature of the departure
from orthodoxy or yielded to the naive extremes of anthropomorphism
that compromised the very meaning of divinity.

At the turn of the century and for some years thereafter, the
Mormons had difficult practical problems of their own, especially
of an economic and political nature, which kept them well occupied,
but their intellectual leaders did not escape the main controversy
of the time, religion versus evolution. The evolution controversy
reached the United States rather late, and it reached the Mormons
a little later, but Roberts was in the thick of it, determined
to make the case for orthodoxy by discrediting Darwinism. An early
essay on the subject, "Man's Relationship to Deity,"
does him little credit, but it is important to the story of his
work. It is interesting that his argument was not anti-scientific
in spirit, an attitude that would have betrayed his confidence
in the virtues of reason. The errors of Darwinism, he insisted,
were not due to the scientists. They were the fault, rather, of
the churches, whose nonsense regarding the creation and age of
the earth had driven the scientists far from the truth in their
efforts to find a ground upon which they could make sense.

Roberts's own efforts to reconcile the findings of science with
a liberalized biblical literalism were typical of the times and
do not deserve serious attention today, but it should be siad
in his defence that in later years he appears to have developed
a somewhat greater sophistication in such matters. He was interested
int he science-religion controversy and read quite widely int
he field, but he ws better prepared to see the dispute in past
centuries than to contribute importantly to it in the present.
As in his treatments of Christian history and dogma, he quoted
extensively from others but made no serious contributions to the
subject.

On the whole, Roberts appears as a writer of uncommon good sense,
determined to distinguish fact from fiction, history from legend,
and meaningful doctrine from meaninglessness. But he had serious
lapses, caused especially by his deficiencies in biblical scholarship
and his inability to escape the yoke of a sometimes abject biblical
literalism. In his final treatment of the problem of Mormonism
and evolution, for instance-a problem that should have posed for
him no really great difficulties, since the Mormon Church had
not then and has not since taken an official stand against organic
evolution-his thought was reduced at one point to the level of
proposing that Adam and Eve were transplanted full grown from
another planet. This piece of fantasy was part of his effort to
come to terms with science by way of arguing for a race of pre-Adamites,
humans who had been obliterated by some natural catastrophe.15
Despite such nonsense, Roberts's instincts were generally good;
in his later years especially he was a strong defender of science
and scientific knowledge. But he knew too little of science and
paid far too little attention to the work of really first-rate
thinkers who were occupied with similar problems. His work on
religion and evolution is less commendable than that of his colleague
Talmage, or his contemporary Frederick J. Pack, a Mormon geologist
who enjoyed considerable Church approval without holding high
Church office.16

But above all, this should be said of Roberts-he was intellectually
alive to the very last, a person whose later maturity increased
not only is wisdom and the general quality of his thought but
also his determination to find the truth about the things that
for him mattered most. There is little doubt that if he had enjoyed
ten more years and had been given full confidence by his ecclesiastical
colleagues, very interesting htings would have come from his pen.

After his death in 1933, Brigham H. Roberts was aseriously neglected
figure in the Mormon Church until very recently. Where once he
was easily the most interesting, exciting, and stimulating person
in its leadership, its most prolific writer, its chief theologian
and historian, and its most capable defender, he has since been
eclipsed by writers of varying but lesser talents, many of whom
lack even the grace to acknowledge their indebtedness to him,
and some of whom seem never to have heard of him. The resurgence
of interest in Roberts's work and the reissue of some of his writings
are therefore fortunate. His name should be kept very much alive
by those who are interested in the intellectual life of Mormonism,
who have any attachment to its robust and romantic past, or who
have genuine concern for the ideas and institutions that have
the substance and strength of Mormonism.

Brigham Henry Roberts was born in Warrington, Lancashire, England,
March 13, 1857, one of six children of benjamin and Ann Everington
Roberts. Both of his parents converted to the Mormon Church, and
in 1862, while he was still a child, his mother left his father
and emigrated to Utah, placing him in the custody of somewhat
irresponsible guardians in England. In 1866, under the auspices
of the Church and accompanied by his sixteen-year-old sister,
Mary, he made the journey to Utah to join his mother, who had
settled in the village of Centerville, now a suburb of Salt Lake
City.

Roberts suffered an unhappy childhood in England, and his early
years in Utah were difficult, always in poverty or near-poverty.
But from an early age he was adventurous and hardworking-as a
miner, a blacksmith, and a ranch-hand. As a youth he read widely,
especially the historians, and eventually, despite severe financial
difficulties, he studied at the University of Deseret, the predecessor
of the University of Utah.

Roberts served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints in the central and southern states from March
1880 to May 1882 and again in the South in 1883 and 1884. He married
two women, Sarah Louisa Smith in 1878 and Celia Dibble in 1884,
and in 1886 was arrested on a federal charge of unlawful cohabitation.
He evaded the law, however, and left for England, again as a missionary,
on the day following his arrest. In 1888 he returned to Utah and
was ordained a member of the First Council of the Seventy, one
of the general governing bodies of the Mormon Church. In April
1889 he surrendered to the federal court on the pending charge
of unlawful cohabitation and served a term of several months in
the Utah territorial prison. He married a third wife, Margaret
Curtis Shipp, in April 1890.

Although much involved in theological, biographical, and historical
writing, Roberts entered territorial politics, serving in the
Utah constitutional convention in 1895. His involvement in politics
resulted in considerable difficulty between him and some of his
less liberal ecclesiastical colleagues, but in 1898 he was elected
to the U.S. House of Representatives as the Democratic candidate
from Utah. Because of his polygamy, however, he was denied his
seat by the Congress.

In 1917 Roberts was appointed chaplain by the First Utah Field
Artillery and served in France under the command of General John
Pershing. He returned to Utah in 1919 and resumed his duties as
a Church leader, becoming the senior member of the First Council
of the Seventy in 1924. From 1922 to 1927 he was president of
the Eastern States Mission of the Church, with headquarters in
New York.

Over a period of several decades Roberts was heavily engaged in
writing and preaching and, allowing for a brief respite duirng
his prison term and his period of military service, in ecclesiastical
duties. He was not infrequently appointed to represent the Church
on special occasions, when an exhibit of its finest forensic talents
was considered important, if not crucial. In sheer volume his
literary output exceeds anything produced by a Mormon Church leader
before or since.

Roberts died in Salt Lake City at the age of seventy-six on September
27, 1933, from complications related to diabetes.

NOTES

1. E. E. Ericksen, The Psychological and Ethical Aspects of
Mormon Group Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922;
reprint, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1975). The
reprint edition has an introduction by Sterling M. McMurrin.

2. References to the Mormons, Mormonism, the Mormon Church, and
the Church are to the people, beliefs, and instituitons of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its headquarters
in Utah. I do not mean to include in these categories other groups
and institutions that are a part of the Mormon movement and tradition.

3. In commenting on Roberts in this essay, I have drawn freely
on "Brigham H. Roberts: Notes on a Mormon Philosopher-Historian,"
which I wrote as an introduction to a 1967 reprinting of Roberts's
early volume, Joseph Smith the Prophet-Teacher (Princeton:
Deseret Club of Princeton University), first published in 1908.

7. A separate and brief manuscript by Roberts comparing Ethan
Smith's View of the Hebrews (1825 ed.; orig. publ. Poultney,
Vt.: Smith & Shute, 1823) with the Book of Mormon, commonly
referred to as "A Parallel," was published in the Rocky
Mountain Mason (Jan. 1956) by Mervin B. Hogan ("A 'Parallel':
A Matter of Chance versus Coincidence"). "A Parallel"
is reprinted in this volume.

8. Truman G. Madsen, "B. H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon,"
Brigham Young University Studies, 19 (1979): 427-45. In
this article Madsen's quotations from Roberts's statements on
the Book of Mormon are almost exclusively from Roberts's earlier
period, prior to his work on "A Book of Mormon Study."

9. Ibid., 441.

10. See the section of this volume on "B. H. Roberts's Correspondence
Related to the Book of Mormon Esays."

11. Regarding the date of the "1923 letter," see note
65 in the section of this volume entitled "Introduction."
Brigham Madsen is of the opinion that his letter was probably
originally dated 1922.

13. Several months after the present volume, including this essay
on Brigham H. Roberts, was sent to the publisher, Madsen published
in an official magazine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints an article entitled "Brigham H. Roberts after Fifty
Years: Still Witnessing for the Book of Mormon," Ensign,
Dec. 1983. In this article Madsen gave attention to the Roberts
manuscripts, "Book of Mormon Difficulties," "A
Book of Mormon Study," and "A Parallel," which
are the substance of this volume. Madsen called attention to the
basic problems and questions that Roberts raised in his "A
Book of Momon Study," but he didn ot provide his readers
with any information on Roberts's views and conclusions on the
problems that were set forth in the manuscripts.

14. Roberts was a member of the First Council of the Seventy,
one of the three governing quorums of the Mormon Church.

15. This aberration appears in Roberts's late unpublished work,
"The Truth, the Way, the Life," written in the 1920s.

16. See Frederick J. Pack's Science and Belief in God (Salt
Lake City: Deseret News, 1924). Pack was professor of geology
at the University of Utah, as Talmage had been in earlier years.